National Geographic Sustainable Destinations Resource Center - The travel and tourism business is now perhaps the largest industry on Earth. While tourism can build understanding, tourism managed poorly can ruin a place. Yet if handled well, tourism provides an incentive to preserve the best things a destination has to offer: wildlife habitats, historic districts, great scenery—even a style of music or a unique local cuisine. That’s why the National Geographic Society has a program to increase knowledge about sustainable tourism and destination stewardship. In this website, you’ll find some useful resources: a) Sustainable tourism resource directories, b) Honduras announces world’s first national geotourism strategy, c) World Legacy Awards, d) 2004 Scorecard of Destination Stewardship, e) TravelWatch articles archive, f) Geotourism Study, g) The Untold Story: Travel Writer’s Guide, and h) Creating a Geotourism MapGuide. They want to help residents, visitors, and professionals practice what is now being called geotourism: tourism that supports the geographical character of the place being visited—its environment, culture, heritage, aesthetics, and the well-being of its citizens. Awareness is the key. Residents who benefit from tourism tend to value and conserve what tourists are coming to see. Visitors reinforce that link when they support businesses that sustain the destination. They hope these web pages help, and welcome your comments and suggestions. This has been added to Reference Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.